McLean Plays: 1: Julie Allardyce; Blackden; Rug Comes to Shuv; One Sure Thing; I'd Rather Go Blind (Contemporary Dramatists)

Duncan McLean is one of Scotland's liveliest fiction and non-fiction writers - this is his first volume of plays. . Julie Allardyce rushes into the theatre like a fresh breeze off the North Sea. It is loud and coarse-tongued and funny . . . a play which opens doors and shoves the audience through into areas of new experience' (Scotland on Sunday) ; Blackden: 'Something of a revelation . . . A gripping, ominous meditation on the strange disappearance of a young man in his prime, driven along by the hard, powerful lilt of McLean's Aberdeenshire Scots' (Scotland on Sunday) ; also included are Rug Comes to Shuv: 'nasty, brutish and hilarious . . . fast, furious and foul-mouthed, it enriches the belly laughs with unexpectedly poignant undercurrents' (The Scotsman) and two other short pieces, One Sure Thing and I'd Rather Go Blind."A magnificent writer with liberal empathy for man's dark side" (Daily Telegraph)